India is one of the few emerging economic powerhouses whose HNWIs have yet to appreciate the benefits of residency and citizenship by investment (RCBI). In this article, Indian immigration attorney Prashant Ajmera outlines some of the major do’s and don’ts of Indian investment migration market success.

Opinion of the editor Citizenship by investment has granted small, developing countries in the Caribbean and Pacific the means to fund public spending independently, rather than rely on outside aid or loans. That financial autonomy reduces the influence developed countries have in these jurisdictions, which is one of the reasons they seek to restrain such

This post was contributed by the Ivan Petrov of the New Balkans Law Office. Background On 22.01.2019 and 23.01.2019, the Government of Bulgaria (GoB) announced intended amendments to Bulgaria’s citizenship law. These will, if passed in Parliament, abolish investment citizenship and align Bulgaria with the 17 EU member-states which the European Commission in its simultaneous

Contributed by Dr. Dimitry Kochenov Today, on 23 January 2019 the Commission released its ‘Report on Investor Citizenship and Residence Schemes in the European Union.’ Given the negative attention the whole issue of selling EU citizenship and residence has been receiving from the powers that be in the European Union, be it the European Parliament

Kianoush MahmoudiDirector and Head of Business Development at Cankash Company Europe has no shortage of citizenship and residence by investment programs, each competing to court the most HNWIs and – by extension -foreign investment. At last count, in fact, more than half the countries in Europe had such programs. While all these programs are

Researcher Stephane Tajick explores the near-to-medium term future of the RCBI-market, and tries to predict the industry’s role in the new global economy. Redistribution of talent Pretty much all advanced economies – as well as several large emerging countries like China, Brazil and Russia – have extremely low fertility rates. The global fertility rate is below 2.5

by L. Burke FilesDue Diligence Expert The OECD recently “blacklisted” 21 jurisdictions on the pretext that their CBI/RBI programs might be used to circumvent the Common Reporting Standards (CRS). The OECD’s report stated: “While residence and citizenship by investment (CBI/RBI) schemes allow individuals to obtain citizenship or residence rights through local investments or against

When I renounced US citizenship last year, after years of debating the idea, the reaction from my friends and colleagues in developing countries like Georgia, Montenegro, and Malaysia was the same: “You’re an idiot.” Very few people – Americans and others alike – understood why I would give up what is widely considered to be

Over the last seven years alone, the number of formal citizenship by investment programs (CIPs) has grown from two to twelve, a formidable rate of growth. But where is the CIP-market going next? Which countries may be opening citizenship programs in the near future? I’ve done a quick back-of-the-napkin analysis to find out. CIP-proliferation is not

This article was contributed by Daniel Twomey, Head of Business Development at La Vida Europe Ltd. Since its inception in 2012, the largest proportion of applicants for the Portuguese Golden Visa (GV) programme have, without doubt, been Chinese. In recent years, however, there’s been a steady decline in demand from Chinese applicants; a decline that

This article was contributed by Dr Jean-Philippe Chetcuti, Managing Partner at Chetcuti Cauchi Advocates. Designed to attract foreign investment and fueling countries’ economic growth, the investment migration industry faces increased scrutiny by supranational organizations like the OECD and the EU. Earlier this year, the OECD launched a consultation process to investigate concerns relating to potential tax

This article was contributed by Sam Bayat, head of Bayat Legal Services. Saint Lucia will no longer accept citizenship by investment applications from Iranian citizens residing in Iran – or elsewhere – ostensibly because background information cannot be reliably verified in Iran and because the banks will not facilitate the transaction. There is, however, more

This article was contributed by Datu Matthew Pajares Yngson, DCPS KCR FRSA Just weeks apart, two major announcements in the Citizenship by Investment-world rocked the boat. Two Eastern European countries officially made their leap to compete with the seven major players of the CIP/CBI industry – Malta, Cyprus, Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts

This article was written by Luc Lu, Investment Migration Insider’s official partner in China. Fewer than one in ten Chinese hold a passport. That figure contains within it a large proportion of students and tourists, the two main catalysts of international travel among the Chinese. Such a low percentage of passport-holders, seen in conjunction with

This article was written by Luc Lu, Investment Migration Insider’s official partner in China In China’s migration market, the emergence of the global digital commercial age has been accompanied by an internet “reform”, which has helped domestic migration firms save a great deal of effort and money on marketing. The previously preferred traditional media tools –

This article was contributed by L. Burke Files, President of the International Due Diligence Organization To a jurisdiction offering citizenship by investment, the risks associated with inadvertently granting citizenship to an “undesirable” are both great and many; They range from domestic and international political embarrassment to severe damage to the value of a nation’s citizenship